I don't know if I like this approach - even though python allows it, I think it's best to still have one data type and one meaning per parameter where we can, otherwise debugging becomes difficult.  I see why this method may not be best suited to the fix here though, so maybe a better solution would be to restore this method back to its original state, and add a retire() method on the VerifiedNumber class.  Then you could just call that retire() method in this method, as well as call it from the retire() method on the CommCareUser.  That would let us still have one place where we retire verified numbers, and still have a clean solution to this problem.