porting C code

[Lucas Raab]

I am currently in the process of porting some C code into Python and am 
stuck. I don't claim to be the greatest C/C++ programmer; in fact, my 
skills at C are rudimentary at best. My question is I have the 
statement: "typedef   unsigned long int  word32" and later on: "word32 
b[3]" referencing the third bit of the integer. How do I do the same in 
Python?? If this is a stupid, I apologize. It's amazing what the lack of 
sleep does to the brain.

TIA,
Lucas