"Of course this wouldn't be a problem if someone could tell me how to send the data to the serial port as it is instead of converting it to a string..."

Are you sure that your serial link can cope with pure Binary data?

The SBUF is 8 bits, so you can only transmit 8 bits at a time; therefore, if you really do want to send your multi-byte value in pure binary, you will have to send each byte in turn.

Use the 'Search' button to find the many previous posts on accessing the individual bytes of an int or larger data object.

You will also have to consider which byte to send first - most significant? least significant?
Try a 'Search' for "Big Endian"