Somewhere in there I think you suggested a reason for the pale gums turning up during illness?

Yes, and I did suggest it: pale gums during illness most likely mean less blood and less inflammation reaching the gums, and anemia is a real but separate possibility.

The mechanism I floated was reduced blood flow and reduced inflammation during acute illness. The records support the inflammation half. In children with iron deficiency anemia, gum inflammation was much higher than in non-anemic children despite identical plaque levels, and lower hemoglobin and ferritin independently predicted more gum inflammation [2]. That means anemia does not make gums pale by calming inflammation; if anything the opposite. So my earlier "less inflammation" framing was too tidy, and I am correcting it.

What the records do show is that pallor and anemia travel together. Oral mucosal pallor appeared in 72.2% of anemic children versus 4.4% of controls [3], and a case report tied mucosal pallor to a blood count showing anemia [1]. Neither proves pallor means anemia in you, and neither explains why your bleeding stopped.

The bleeding stopping is the part no record here explains. Less bleeding usually means less inflammation, and anemia is associated with more, not less [2]. A blood count is what would settle whether you are anemic. My call: the pallor plausibly reflects anemia, the mechanism I gave earlier was partly wrong, and the stopped bleeding remains unexplained by these records. Confidence: low.