I was diagnosed today, and I'm confused. Please help.

I was diagnosed today and I'm going on a cortisone (pill, Betapred) treatment starting tomorrow. But reading around here and on other subs/forums has me confused. It seems like most people only think this is a "cool thing" and a minor inconvenience, I've seen several people who diagnose others and say that it's not something that will bother them in any way and that the most annoying thing is the question "What happened to your arm?!".

Now, I didn't really get a chance to ask my doctor very much, and it was quite hard to understand (there was a language barrier and I had never heard of Dermatographia before, so I had no background knowledge of it), but the way people dismiss this thing makes me suspect I was either given a wrong diagnosis or that this is something that widely vary from person to person. The language barrier made me question if my doctor really understood my issues or if she just zoned in on my skin becoming red and raised.

My issues are so severe they affect my day to day life, there's the normal "Scratch and you'll have red/raised skin, can write on skin etc", but I also get so extremely itchy it disturbs my sleep, if I accidentally scratch myself when I'm asleep the itchiness will wake me up. It also gives me proper rashes, last year it showed up around my eyes and they were swollen, red and itchy for a couple of months. This year it has affected my whole face and it's now extremely itchy, red, textured, burning and my skin is slightly peeling. Antihistamines kinda work, but not really.

So, you guys, who knows more than me, what do you think? Could I have been misdiagnosed or is there a scale on how severe it can be? I'm sorry if these are some really stupid questions, but I honestly don't know.