I am refactoring a python function in a large codebase. Currently, it looks like:

```
def GetEvents(file_path):

    ...

    return events #a list of Event objects

```

A bunch of code depends on this function returning a list object already. However, I want to refactor it so it returns:

```
def GetEvents(file_path):

    ...

    return (events, event_header)

```

Where event\_header is a little description of this group of events. However, this will badly break all code that currently expects a list, not a tuple to be returned. In any other language, I would pass the event\_header by reference, but I do not think I can do that in Python. I could also declare another function, GetEventsAndHeader(), but that awkwardly duplicates functionality.

Suggestions?