Chicken Pox & Bleeding gums - connected??

[Boggler]

My ds (8) currently has a very mild dose of chicken pox, other than being a bit itchy and obviously spotty he's fine and is definitely going to school as soon as he scabs over (lovely).

Anyway today I notice that his gums are swollen and very red, when I asked him if they felt ok he said that they had bled a bit when he cleaned his teeth this morning :-/ He's usually really good cleaning his teeth and has never had a filling or tooth decay at all so this is really unsettling. My first thought was is this connected to the chicken pox? Answer I don't know and google hasn't thrown up any real answers, so do any mumnetters know?

Has he had a temperature at all as that can soften gums?

No temperature, like I say very mild infection.

Might he have chicken pox spots inside his mouth?

I seem to remember that you can get spots in weird places that you wouldn't expect including the mouth. I was at school with someone who had pox on his retina which damaged his sight

How good is your dentist? Could you ring them up and ask if it's a possibility and if so, what should you look out for and what should you do to help? Eg would Salt water swill around help ?

Ds1 had a very sore mouth with chicken pox, in fact 1 week down the line his mouth is still sore, gums look red and he had obvious ulcers and spots on the roof of his mouth and his gums. He had quite a bad dose, started off mild and thought we had been lucky (50 or so spots), two days in he woke up looking like someone had attacked him with a red pen, probably 200+ spots. It has taken a week to scab over completely.