Advice for a newly diagnosed pooch in the UK

[clairebear]

Hi all, hope everyone’s well? I’ve got a bit of a Louis update and I want to ask for some opinions if that’s ok?
First off Lou’s had a water infection. It started around 3 or 4 weeks ago when he wee’d in the house, that’s when I knew something wasn’t right. It was just a hunch but I took a water sample in to a routine check up and it came back with white blood cells in. He was given a week’s worth of amoxicillin and seemed to be doing ok until around a week later when he had about a half an hour of wanting to go out a lot. This set my alarm bells ringing again so I gave his gentleman’s bits a wipe and there was blood on the tissue. So back to the vets, a dip test came back negative but we decided to send the sample off to see if the lab could grow and bugs from it. This came back positive to a bug that is slightly resistant to penicillin so we’re now on another antibiotic. He’s only had his second dose today so we’ll see how that goes.
So, on to the Cushings. We’re trying him back on a 30mg dose, the idea being that he might do better on them now that he’s also on painkillers for his arthritis. The problem is it still doesn’t seem to be suiting him. The first two days he carried on eating as he was, then his appetite has started to drop again, just like it did the first time we tried 30mg. I think even on 20mg his appetite was suppressed a little too much for my liking.
It feels like no matter what dose we try him on it just doesn’t do anything. If anything I think he’s better either on a very low dose or none at all. I’m getting to the stage where I’m thinking of asking the vet if we can stop the Cushings treatment altogether, maybe for a month or two to see how he is just on painkillers. I know there can be some complications from not treating Cushings, water infections being one! But as this is the only infection he’s had we can’t draw a conclusion that it’s related to the Cushings.
When he was first diagnosed the vet gave me the choice of wether or not to treat it. At the time it was a no brainier as I thought it would help him but it’s doing nothing. The vet has spoken about more tests, like the adrenal tumour one I’ve mentioned before but I’m so tired of going to the vets with him and I think Lou is too. I just want a bit of a break from it all, it feels like we’re tying ourselves in knots with all the what ifs and tests.
What are everyone’s thoughts on not treating Cushings? The vet had told me of dogs that he didn’t treat for various reasons so it can be done. I’m very mindful of the complications from not treating it, like infections and liver problems but if I decide to go ahead and stop treatment what can I give to maybe lessen the chances of complications? I’ve been told about milk thistle for the liver and cranberry tablets for the urinary tract.
I’d really appreciate your honest opinion in all this, am I doing the right thing in asking the vet to stop, even for a short while?