question: how string and hexadecimal

i have the following string: "4ca00ff4c898d61e1edbf1800618fb28" and i want python to 'see' it as hex
in other word i want this string to be 16 bytes instead of 32 while keeping its value. I have solve this problem
on the past but i dont remember how... .encode./decode("hex") wont work since the value will change.

Any suggestions? thanks in advance!