Since the amount of data going back and forth will be very low overall, I may have gotten away with this 'hack' job. Instead of messing with the complexity of python serial communications, I edited the Arduino IDE to only transmit data if the port == 0 (free) and to put in a 50 ms buffer after sending a packet to help stabilize the communications.

>      int sensorValue = analogRead(A5);   
>          if (Serial.available() == 0) {
>              Serial.println(sensorValue);
>              delay(50);
>              }