You fuckers joke, but this is totally not accurate. If your employer is large enough and you've got money to hire a lawyer if/when things go wrong, there's a legally mandated program referred to as FMLA in the USA that gives you the right to 12 whole fucking unpaid weeks of time away from your job if the company that your employer contracts out to handle these things approves of your request and your medical providers properly fill out all the paperwork necessary. So suck it Europe. And suck it Asia. And suck it Africa. And suck it all the other continents that don't have FMLA.