If you're like me you will try everything! Steroid creams help many (otherwise they wouldn't be used). For me they didn't do enough. I found a high strength 10% menthol cream, like Ben Gay, Icy Hot or knock-offs to be extremely effective in stopping the itch for 6 hours or so. Sometimes I mix with the steroid cream. Others here were helped (some dramatically) by Cilantro smoothies. Not me. I found two things in addition to the 10% menthol to help decrease symptoms by 70% or more: sleeping in a hammock (the key here is ventilation...make sure bedding and clothing and arm chairs are breathable) and antihistamine (Claritin in the AM and Benydryl before bed).

More on ventilation. Anything non-porous is bad: leather upholstry, foam or water mattresses, memory foam toppers, tight fitting polyester clothing, etc. . Your skin needs to breathe. Place one of those throw pillows with batting (not foam) between your back and your leather arm chair. Use a mattress cover that is made of bamboo or cotton I'm 67 and sleep in a hammock, but won't be able to do it forever because its difficult to get out of it in the middle of the night. So eventually I'll need to return to a mattress. The key is breathability.

Then there is UV narrowband light. My Doc has great success with it, but it requires going in five times a week for six months, then continuing twice a week maybe forever. So far I haven't been willing.

Sorry to learn of the severity for you. For ~20 yrs. mine comes and goes for months at a time and has been confined to torso. I once had a PCP RX tetracycline for rash, but the side effects appeared to outweigh the possible benefit.

Steroids will give you temporary relief, but you can't take them for more than a week. Different things work for different people. My best advice is to go back to the beginning of this blog and start reading. There is a lot of really good advice here, more than any doctor can prescribe.